A method is known from DE 10 2011 084 366 A1, which describes a self-steering parking assistant, also called a garage assistant. After a driver has stopped his/her vehicle close to a desired parking space and has exited the vehicle, he/she starts the automatic parking maneuver, whereupon the parking assistant undertakes the control of the drive, braking, steering and, where appropriate, transmission functions of the vehicle, and parks the vehicle autonomously. In this way, the driver is spared an uncomfortable process of getting in and out of narrow garages, or in other narrow perpendicular or transverse parking spaces.
In the terminology used herein, for the sake of simplicity, the driver will be designated as such also after he/she has got out, but is still located close to the vehicle, even though he/she can then only perform restricted operating functions, for example via a dedicated remote control, a smartphone or a radiofrequency key.
The above parking assistant and similar known parking assistants must have already detected the dimensions of the parking space very precisely before the vehicle is able to drive autonomously into the parking space. This is possible only with elaborate environment sensor systems, for example with a combination of sensors based on ultrasound, radar, laser and/or cameras, a so-called sensor fusion. In the course of longitudinal parking, the capture of the environment ordinarily takes place in the course of a driver-controlled drive past a possible parking space. Precisely how this happens in the case of transverse parking is not disclosed in the generic printed publication, but a procedure similar to that in the case of longitudinal parking is to be assumed—that is to say, a capture of the environment during a driver-controlled approach to a possible parking space. This also corresponds to a method for automatic forward or reverse parking described in DE 10 2008 051 982 A1, wherein the driver stops and exits the vehicle only when the parking space has been recognized to be appropriately dimensioned.